Inquiry and Agency : A Theory of Intellectual Virtues and Vice

A systematic and sophisticated account of the nature, structure, and status of intellectual virtues and vices. It provides a conceptual model of intellectual virtues like curiosity, open-mindedness, and intellectual courage and intellectual vices like dogmatism, closed-mindedness, and intellectual arrogance.

In Inquiry and Agency, Jason Baehr develops a systematic account of the nature, structure, and evaluative status of intellectual virtues and vices. Drawing on a theory of moral virtue by Robert Adams (2006), Baehr argues that intellectual virtues like curiosity, open-mindedness, and intellectual courage are ways of "excellently being for epistemic goods" that reflect favorably on who we are as persons, and that intellectual vices like dogmatism, narrow-mindedness, and intellectual arrogance are ways of falling short of this standard, ways that contribute negatively to our personal worth. Inquiry and Agency is the most in-depth and sophisticated treatment of intellectual virtues and vices since Linda Zagzebski''s pioneering work Virtues of the Mind (1996). While advancing several debates in virtue epistemology, it proposes a model of intellectual virtues and vices that will be accessible to non-experts and useful to researchers in other disciplines. Inquiry and Agency is the product of decades of reflection by a leading figure in the field. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the characterological dimensions of the life of the mind.